One of our players started a meme a little while back for Depths of Peril, so I thought I would join in.  Click on the comments link at the bottom if you want to see other people's answers or if you want to answer them yourself.

Are you male or female?

• male

What is your favorite character, the one that you play the most (short version, pls: name, type, lvl)?

• I have too many characters to count, but I usually like warriors the most these days.  One of my favorites, although I haven't played him in a while, is Jarrow a level 25 warrior.

Who does that character travel/party with?

• Lately, who ever is the highest level and I constantly replace the lower level recruits unless they are just awesome.

What type of monster do you hate the most?

• None of them really, but what do you expect from the designer. :)

What type do you like the most?

• Depends on the day.  Right now the imps because they have 2 types with different personalities and they have a cool story about them.

What terrain do you like the most (ie: forest, desert, underground)

• The areas that stand out the most like Black Forest and Red Death. 

Do you like day or night the most?

• Night.  It is a little more dangerous, but has more loot.

What is your favorite type of quest?

• Hidden treasure and recruit quests.

What is your favorite fighting tactic?

• Wade right in and start killing everything, use lots of food and potions, and run when necessary.

Do you collect treasures during a fight or after?

• During for easy fights and after for harder fights.

How do you explore new territory (above ground)?

• Usually around the outside and then the inside.

How do you explore new territory (under ground)?

• No real technique, wander towards areas that I haven't been.

Do you use keyboard hotkeys or click icons?

• Hotkeys.

Do you end the game when you've beaten the other covenants, or play further to win more quests?

• I'll finish up any good quests I have and then start a new game.

Does your character have any quirks that you've made up?

• Depends on the character.  My warriors tend to always go for straight military wins, whereas my other characters are much more open to diplomatic options.

What are your five favorite tips?

• Certain monsters should be killed quickly: scavengers, plaguebringers, dimensional gates, and liches.
• Keep your relations up with at least a couple of the other covenants so you have some friends and the covenants aren't all enemies.
• Solve as many quests as possible.  They give good XP and influence.
• Try to always have your skill points used up.  You can always buy them back if you want to change them.
• Tell all of your friends to buy the Depths of Peril also. Ok, I had to sneak at least one of these in here. :)

Comments

Can all of the companies making RPG games please, for the love of all that is good and holy, please stop naming their games Dungeon X.  I can't even keep track of them any more and I probably pay way more attention to the genre than most people.

I mean in the last few years (or upcoming) we have had Dungeon Explorer, Dungeon Siege (1, 2, and a couple expansions), many Dungeons & Dragons products, Dungeon Cleaners, Dungeon Delvers, Dungeon Hero, Dungeon Lords, Dungeon Runners, and probably others that I have forgotten about.

Now I don't expect D&D to change, but can everyone else please stop naming their games the same thing?

Is everyone else tired of this practice and starting to forget what game is what or is it just me?  Maybe I should have called Depths of Peril, Dungeon Peril instead. :)

Comments

A fellow indie developer posted a blog post defending patches over on his blog Rampant Coyote.  He does a pretty good job of stating that patches are a good thing.

All of the people that complain about developers releasing patches for their games really need to realize one thing.  Patches are a tool and like most tools they aren't inherently good or bad.  It depends on how you use them.

The reason that a lot of people don't like patches is because some companies have shipped buggy crap too early in the past and used patches to fix the mess.  This is a bad practice for the long term.  In the short term, you will ship on time, hit your marketing window, and might make a lot of initial sales.  However, in the long run I think this attitude will eventually catch up to you.

There are plenty of responsible, good ways to use patches though.  Some companies test well, release stable products, but still choose to release patches.  Why?  Because you can smooth out some of the rough edges that you didn't know you had, you can fix the small bugs that only hundreds or thousands of players can find, but more importantly you can see exactly how your actual gamers are playing the game and adjust the game to fit exactly what they want.  You can add more content, you can make moding the game easier, you can balance the gameplay to suit your specific audience better, and there are many other things that you can do to support your community.

Unfortunately, we've seen too many companies abuse patches so they have gotten a bad rap.

Comments

I hope everyone has had a good holiday and I hope everyone has a great 2008!

It's been a little quiet here for the last week, because I actually took some time off for a change.  Apparently I should work less, since a lot of good things happened last week: a new interview, another good review, Depths of Peril got GameTunnel's RPG of the year award, and it got runner up in GameTunnel's game of the year.

Comments

Here's my interesting perspective about Duke Nukem Forever.

Once long, long ago (1996) in a place far away (Garland, TX) some people that were working on the Duke Nukem series and I believe had started working on Duke Nukem Forever, quit 3D Realms and started Hipnotic Interactive.  A couple years later these guys had shipped a Quake expansion and had changed their name to Ritual Entertainment.

During these 2 years I was working at Nortel and working at a game startup working on an RPG.  The startup wasn't going to work out and I was bored at Nortel, so I decided to get into the game industry full time and there was this cool company called Ritual nearby.  So I started working at Ritual in late 1998.

In the next 6 years that I worked at Ritual we shipped Sin, Heavy Metal: FAKK 2, Blair Witch 3, Elite Force II, Counter-Strike XBox/Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, and Delta Force: Black Hawk Down.  We also helped out on numerous games like Alice and 25 to Life and had a few game cancelled on us.

At this point in time I really want to work on an RPG, so I leave Ritual (2004) and setup Soldak Entertainment and start working on Depths of Peril.  Three very, long years later we finally ship Depths of Peril.

A few months after that Duke Nukem Forever releases a new trailer.

Comments

RPGWatch http://www.rpgwatch.com/ has a cool Indie RPG of the year poll.  Do us all a favor and go vote.  Hopefully you will vote for Depths of Peril, but if not at least vote.

I say cool because indie games don't get much press attention, so a poll specifically about indie RPGs is cool in my opinion.

Comments

Yeah, they finally talked Peter Jackson into working on the Hobbit and apparently a sequel.  It doesn't look like he is going to be directing them like on the LOTR movies, but hopefully they will still be just as good.

Comments

I saw something about this on someone else's blog a while back, but I'm still curious.  Why does music not have a rating system?  Sometimes they have an advisory, but that's it.

Meanwhile, games do have a ratings system.  Yet there is constantly some state, US senator, or some other government body trying to regulate games in one way or another.

This seems backwards.  You would think the government would do something about the form of entertainment that doesn't have a ratings system.

Is this only a US quirk or are other countries like this too?

Comments